


I Choose You

by nerddowell



Category: Versailles (TV 2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Canon Era, M/M, Pre-Show for the most part, Tumblr Prompt, another AU i love but have never written before
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-06-21
Updated: 2017-06-21
Packaged: 2018-11-17 01:39:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,604
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11265300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/nerddowell
Summary: Anon on Tumblr prompted me 'Monchevy prompt for you: "Do you believe in soulmates?"' yesterday, so here is the resulting fic.Philippe’s grandmother dangled the compass over him, repeating his name in a soft voice, and laid it beside the baby’s head, placing the body of the compass in his little hand. It fit perfectly in his newborn palm, and inside the lid, the needle went from static north-north-east (his grandmother’s location, as the soulmate of his grandfather) to spinning endlessly around and around, searching for someone not yet born.





	I Choose You

**Author's Note:**

> Yes, me again, I'm sorry for flooding your fandom tags, guys :/

The day Philippe was born, he inherited his grandfather’s silver compass from his grandmother. She had come to see him and his mother, still in her confinement chamber, his mother wrapped in her silk dressing gown now that the messiness of the birth was over, and he dressed in his swaddling clothes and sleeping in the crib at the end of the bed. His mother was awake when his grandmother walked in, and seeing the fist-sized box in her wizened old hand knew immediately what was happening, having witnessed her elder son Louis receiving his compass two years previously.

She smiled tremulously. She had wanted none of this soulmate nonsense for her children, none of those ridiculous expectations of having one person and one alone whom they could truly love their whole lives. She had been determined that she would choose her own destiny, find the soulmate she wanted rather than the one the universe dictated, and had instead married their father, a prince and a far better match than the kitchen boy her compass had led her to. She would never understand why people deliberately put their future children through poverty, homelessness or worse simply for their own love; it seemed incredibly selfish to her. She had chosen financial and familial security for her children-to-be, and although she didn’t love her husband, she could live with a loveless marriage if it ensured her children would grow up with the best lives she could give them. However, her mother had been furious, and it was only upon the birth of Louis and her husband’s immovable insistence that their son receive his soulmate gift that she and her mother reached their current state of truce.

‘A beautiful little boy,’ her mother said, stopping by the crib to run a dry palm over the baby’s head, smoothing his thin dark hair, and he screwed bright blue eyes tight shut with a wail, waving tiny fists. His grandmother cooed at him, chucked him under the chin, picked him up and rocked him gently; nothing would calm him, and he continued to cry until she wrapped him in a blanket and passed him to his mother.

‘He’s going to be another rebellious one,’ his grandmother said with something like distaste, ‘he’ll take after his mother.’

Her daughter glared at her, smoothing her hand over her son’s ruffled hair, and he settled almost instantaneously. His eyes opened slowly and he blinked before giving a tiny yawn and settling back to sleep, his head turned towards her breast. She hummed softly to him, stroking his red little cheek with one knuckle, and the baby snuffled quietly in his sleep. She peeled the blanket and swaddling cloth away to take his tiny hands in hers, counting each of his perfectly-formed fingers and toes, in awe of this miniature person she had created and carried for the past nine months. She was sure he was even more beautiful than his brother had been.

‘It’s time,’ his grandmother said, taking the box out of her pocket. His mother held the baby tighter, shaking her head.

‘Louis has got his. Surely that’s enough.’

‘A king will never marry his soulmate. Give this one a chance.’

‘Philippe will find love on his own without magnetic interference,’ her daughter argued, and the grandmother smiled, taking the compass out of its box by the chain.

‘Philippe, is it?’

She seemed to be speaking more to the compass than her daughter, but when she took the baby from his mother and laid him back in the crib, he didn’t stir. His mother told her fruitlessly to stop, but eventually seemed to accept whatever was going to happen next as inevitable and lay back to go to sleep. Philippe’s grandmother dangled the compass over him, repeating his name in a soft voice, and laid it beside the baby’s head, placing the body of the compass in his little hand. It fit perfectly in his newborn palm, and inside the lid, the needle went from static north-north-east (his grandmother’s location, as the soulmate of his grandfather) to spinning endlessly around and around, searching for someone not yet born.  


* * *

When Philippe was four years old, in the middle of a game of hide-and-seek with Louis and Bontemps, their family valet and technically Louis’ bodyguard-of-sorts as  _Dauphin_ , he crawled into a cupboard in one of their mother’s rooms, amongst piles of knitted blankets and pillows, soft toys and clothes from when he and Louis were tiny babies. He could hear Bontemps stepping loudly outside as he searched linen closets and bedrooms alike for his brother, who Philippe could hear giggling from the bathroom down the hall. He had always been better at hide and seek than Louis, who got too enthusiastic for the next game and would give himself away with his laughter. Philippe was quieter, more sombre, as a child, and games of hide and seek with him would frequently end with palace guards searching the whole grounds for him until he was found, still quiet as a mouse, hiding inside the pantry or one of the travelling trunks in one of the courtiers’ bedrooms.

Philippe created himself a sort of nest out of the blankets, butting a pillow up against each of the three ‘walls’ of the cupboard to create a comfortable enclosure to settle down in, and padded the floor of the wardrobe with a couple of blankets. When he lay down, something hard pressed against his ribs, and he pulled up the blanket to find a small wooden box with a rusting latch that popped open with only the barest amount of pressure. He opened it carefully to pull out a compass like Louis’, except this was silver where Louis’ was golden. He watched the needle spin for a moment, sweeping left-to-right motions, before settling with a quiver towards the zig-zag shape on the face. He tapped it, trying to make the needle move again, but it remained rock steady in its current position, and he put it back into its box, convinced it was broken. Louis’ moved around constantly, around and around like a spinning top.

He was curious about this broken toy, though. Louis wasn’t allowed to touch his; he’d picked it up one afternoon from a drawer in the nursery chest of drawers and carried it to their mother, asking what it was; she’d said it belonged to Louis, but that he couldn’t have it, because it could easily get broken. Then she’d hidden it away somewhere neither of them could find until Louis had turned six and dug it out again from the very bottom of her desk drawer, under a piece of wood that disguised an extra hidden cubby. Louis now kept his beneath his pillow, and was always pulling it out at night to look at it, to watch the needle revolve.

He turned the box around in his hands, squinting through his too-long hair at it, lost in thought. Footsteps outside the cupboard made him jump, banging his elbow against the wall of the cupboard, and he shoved the box quickly into the pocket of his jacket just as Louis threw the doors of the cupboard open and yelled triumphantly to Bontemps, ‘I found him! Now it’s my turn to count!’

For the next game, Philippe hid again in a cupboard, this time under the grand staircase in the entrance hall of the palace, and he wasn’t found for several hours, at which point he had fallen asleep with his compass around his neck, tucked inside his shirt so his mother wouldn’t see.  
  


* * *

At thirteen Philippe had a tutor, to give him a proper education in the languages and politics he would need to learn as a  _Fils de France_. At the particular moment in time, he was lounging in his seat, elbow on his desk as he supported his chin on one hand, totally and completely bored by the finer (and impossible to grasp) points of English grammar. He didn’t care to learn anything about that wretched country, although his mother still hadn’t given up her threats of making him marry an English princess to end the centuries of tension between their two countries and attempt to bring a powerful ally to France. Louis had, of course, been crowned and recognised as King these past four years, but realistically it was still their mother and Louis’ advisors in charge of the country.

He pulled his compass out from beneath his shirt, watching it spin, before an idea struck him. He quickly tucked the compass back beneath his shirt before speaking up and interrupting M. de Montfort’s  _fascinating_  lesson.

‘I was wondering if you might explain how compasses work.’

The English master cocked one eyebrow, unused to his usually well-behaved and courteous pupil interrupting him in such a manner, but he promptly took a seat opposite Philippe and fixed him with a beady stare from behind his eyeglasses. Philippe tried to maintain as innocent an expression as he could manage, and the master seemed convinced when, after a couple of seconds, he turned back to his board and drew a diagram of the Earth, bisected in several places with dotted lines of chalk.

‘Compasses use the magnetic fields created by the North and South poles of the Earth to determine direction. They are magnetised naturally towards the North pole, which allows for ease of navigation as, if one knows exactly where North is at all times, one can judge by what degree one needs to travel in other directions to reach one’s destination.’

‘I understand that,’ Philippe said in a bored voice, having received exactly this lesson in military history and geography at ten years old. He hesitated for a long moment. ‘I mean… the other kind of compass. How do they work? How do they locate what are referred to as soulmates? Surely it’s impossible, as humans aren’t naturally magnetised – I do not pick up everything containing metal whenever I walk past it – so how can a compass reliably point to another human being without getting distracted by things that are magnetised whenever one walks past them holding it?’

‘I’m afraid, my prince, that I do not have a solid answer for you. I believe there may be a sort of magnetism emitted solely by the body to which these instruments are particularly sensitive, but I have not ever deconstructed one to find out.’

‘But how does it know which particular person? Unless they run on witchcraft, there must be some sort of explanation.’

‘That’s quite enough discussion of witchcraft and the sciences for one day, my prince. We were engaged in the English language, which will no doubt one day be of very great importance to you. So if we can return to the grammar, for example, the use of the phrasal verb…’

* * *

  
Philippe was eighteen and finished, as far as he was concerned, with his formal studies when he had his first encounter with love. He had been a regular member of the court for seven or eight years by this point, and thus had encountered the Cardinal Mazarin and his handsome young nephew, Jules, Duke of Nevers. He had understood the leanings of his attractions towards others for a similar amount of time, although this was the first time he had felt them attach themselves so strongly to another person. He was, for want of a better word, infatuated, and followed Jules throughout the court whenever he could be spared.

He spent hours gazing at Jules’ comely thighs, strong and well-shaped in their tight breeches, his calves boosted in the high-heeled shoes every man of the court with any sense of self-improvement wore to imitate (and thus flatter) the King; he could spend whole afternoons at the card tables in the salons playing cards with him, watching the graceful movement of pale fingers fluttering over the cards as he shuffled, often throwing Philippe sultry dark-eyed looks from behind his curtains of shining chestnut hair.

Philippe had thus taken his chance during a court dinner one evening, and had dragged Jules away to his chambers where he sat astride him on the bed and kissed him, again and again, growing drugged on the taste of Jules’ lips – plum-coloured where the wine from dinner had stained them, and tasting of it whenever Philippe’s shy tongue ventured into his mouth – until his cock ached in his breeches and he had to draw away from the shame of it. Jules had run a hand over his crotch, gasping softly and offering him a wicked smile when he felt how hard Philippe was beneath the silks and velvets, and he asked, ‘Don’t you know what to do with it?’

‘Of course I do,’ Philippe told him crossly, pushing his hand away. ‘I’m not a child.’

‘But you are as innocent as one,’ Jules whispered, and he seemed pleased by the idea. ‘My poor Philippe, untouched and wanting…’

Philippe had no time to open his mouth, whether to protest or ask for clarification, as Jules had slipped out from under him to kneel on the floor by the bed, encouraging Philippe to shuffle over with his thighs wide, either side of Jules’ shoulders. Philippe stared down at him in apprehension, wondering what on earth all this could be leading to (although he had hopes forming, shadowy, in the back of his mind, that he didn’t dare voice) and found himself throwing his head back as Jules unbuttoned his breeches and set his mouth to Philippe’s aching flesh, suckling him gently and rolling his balls in the palm of his hand.

It was over somewhat embarrassingly quickly, with Philippe panting hard and biting his lip to stifle his cries of pleasure, and once he was done, he dragged Jules up to lavish him with more kisses until they were both as breathless as each other and Philippe was staring, starry-eyed, at his new favourite with the utmost love in his eyes.

That night, as Jules lay sleeping in Philippe’s bed, he sat on the window seat and pulled his compass out to watch where it would point. His heart was beating furiously beneath his nightgown, certain that it would spin towards where Jules lay, relaxed in slumber, beneath the coverlet. It seemed to take its time at least before settling in an easterly direction, towards the gardens. Philippe’s heart skipped a beat, and he shook it furiously, convinced that it had to be wrong. Still it stayed pointing towards the gardens, where he could hear voices amongst the hedgerows of the maze, courtiers making merry after the wine of the dining table.

There was no doubt about it, he thought sourly, his compass was wrong. There were no such thing as soulmates if it could so callously overlook the man Philippe was so desperately in love with for some unknown trollop having his way with someone amongst the trees. He tore the chain from around his neck, breaking the delicate links, and threw it into a drawer in his night table aggressively before heading back to bed, where he wrapped his arms around Jules and whispered, ‘I don’t care what some idiotic compass says. I love you, and you  _are_  my soulmate.’

* * *

  
After Jules was sent away with his uncle when Louis grew tired of them, Philippe quickly realised that perhaps Jules had not been a soulmate so much as his first love, which he had heard from many of the court’s women was always the most intense (and the most fickle). He had at first taken the latter as a sort of personal insult, thinking that they meant to demean him for having flighty emotions, but after remembering Louis and his constant string of women in and out of his chambers wherever the court went, he decided that physical affection could not be the thing that defined soulmates, and anyway, they didn’t exist.

In fact, he made a vow with himself that he would choose his soulmate, choose the person he would love for the rest of his life, and no ridiculous compass with a broken sense of direction would tell him otherwise.

Of course, at twenty, he had married the princess Henrietta, nicknamed Minette, who most certainly was not a soulmate. He tolerated her presence in his bed, although he did not enjoy it, and grew to value her greatly as a friend and confidante, with her soft-spoken manners and infallibly delicate way of handling any problems he brought to her. However, he didn’t love her, and never could, which upset her terribly at first and made him feel painfully guilty. It made him feel even worse to learn that she had sought that comfort in Louis’ arms, however, which drove a wedge between them and meant that he could never really trust her again.

Instead he found himself another amusement in the form of Armand, comte de Guiche, who was beautiful and arrogant and in no time had Philippe wrapped around his little finger. Philippe loved to spoil his lover and would constantly lavish him with money, gifts and attention, dressing as his partner for court dances in gowns of complementary colours and with his hair dressed high and threaded with freshwater pearls that shone under the palace lights. There was also many a time where, after imbibing too much at some party or another, they would have fights that shook the palace walls until the small hours, when they would make up between the bedsheets and Philippe would sob out his apologies between sighs and pleas for more.

De Guiche, however, was sent away by Philippe’s own hand, when boredom got the better of him. His brother’s nagging about the young Comte’s iron-clad control of Philippe rankled, and he sent him away purely to prove Louis wrong before realising after a couple of weeks that it was truly no great loss.

The last of his court flirtations is with a young man whose acquaintance he had made during his Jules era, whose golden blond ringlets and Adonis-like looks had intrigued him until his utterly arrogant, flippant personality had driven him away again. However, since spending time with de Guiche, Philippe had developed something of a taste for arrogance, for a partner who was not afraid to tease or make fun of him, who was a match of wits for his own sarcastic nature when the time called for it, and de Lorraine was perfect in that respect. His beauty was also well-reported throughout the court, and although Philippe only caught glimpses of him here and there for the most part, de Lorraine could always be relied upon to be uttering some witty remark at the exact moment the prince walked into any room, making him smile as he stepped over the threshold.

* * *

  
He was lying in bed, the newly-minted Chevalier de Lorraine draped over him with the blankets all over the floor, both naked as the day they were born, running his hand lazily through the Chevalier’s tousled blond curls when Lorraine spoke up.

‘Do you believe in soulmates?’

Philippe turned his head to look at him, frowning. ‘No. Why?’

‘Did you never get one of those compasses?’

‘Of course. I inherited my grandfather’s. However, I thought it ridiculous that some unexplained force of the universe should search out and decide which person I dedicate my life to, and decided from that moment on that I was a man in charge of my own destiny,’ he said firmly, pressing a kiss to the Chevalier’s temple, ‘as I recommend all free-thinking men do. This predestined rubbish is exactly that – rubbish.’

‘So if you were to take your compass now and have it point away from the Adonis lying in front of you on the bed–’ The Chevalier grinned and stretched out like a cat, emphasising the strong lines of his body from his muscular thighs to his torso which tapered from broad shoulders and a strong chest to the nest of golden curls between his legs, his cock lying satedly against his belly, ‘you wouldn’t walk out of this room to run after whichever person the universe tells you you  _are_  destined for?’

‘Never,’ Philippe told him, rolling him over and climbing on top of him to press lazy kisses to his shoulders and neck, making the Chevalier purr and arch beneath him. ‘Why do you ask?’

‘Because, mignonette, I found this in your night table,’ the Chevalier held up the compass on its snapped silver chain, ‘and it seems rather fond of me.’ He passed it to Philippe to demonstrate and walked in a semi-circle around the bed, deliberately strutting like some sort of bantam rooster and pausing at the edge of the bed to lean himself against the post and swing around it seductively. Philippe held the compass in his hand and watched with wide eyes as the needle followed the Chevalier’s movements, his heart rate increasing by the second as the compass continued to track the Chevalier moving around the room and even into the hallway to take a piss.

‘Well,’ he called in a weak voice, ‘at least if you ever get lost, I shall know where to find you.’

‘I thought you didn’t believe in soulmates,’ the Chevalier said as he launched himself at the bed, tackling Philippe to the mattress and smothering his surprised laughter in kisses.

‘I don’t,’ Philippe told him, ‘I  _chose_  you, and that’s all that matters.’

The Chevalier’s smile was as brilliant as sunlight, and he tangled their fingers together, brushing his lips over Philippe’s knuckles, his blue eyes like stars.

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me on [tumblr](http://transdorleans.tumblr.com) if there's a versailles fic you want to read! i'm always happy to take prompts/fanboy with you/apologise for my fandom flooding with y'all so please do come keep my inbox company!


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